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31/10/2011

Weekend results roundup!

Right, time to clear everything up from this weekends races.

F1
Results: Sutil 9th (2points), Di Resta 13th, Karthikeyan 17th.

The race was very interesting from Force India's point of view. The team decided to split the strategy for both cars and the standard two-stop strategy worked well for Adrian Sutil. On the other hand, Paul Di Resta decided to try and get the slower harder tyres out of the way early on but that would only really work with the aid of a safety car which didn't come. It was a calculated risk and this time it didn't pay off.

Nevertheless a good race for Force India in terms of the championship.

With Renault 21pts ahead and just two races to go they look to be in a safe P5 in the constructors championship. The main aim now is to stay ahead of Sauber and Toro Rosso, both of whom are 10pts behind us. As long as our team keeps scoring points we should be okay.

While on the subject of Force India, check out F1.com's interview with Sahara's Subrata Roy here, he's the man who now owns 42.5% of the Indian F1 team.

Elsewhere, Narain Karthikeyan enjoyed a great race in India. 17th place is his joint best result of the season (he also achieved 17th in Monaco and Canada) however it's not the position that counts here, it's the performance. Good pace was demonstrated consistently by Narain and i am sure this has given the HRT management something to think about in terms of driver line-up heading into the next race in Abu Dhabi. There is a nice little piece on autosport.com about Narain here.

You can see quotes from all race drivers and some team personnel about this weekend's race right here.

Armaan Ebrahim was not in action for the final F2 weekend of the season in Barcelona unfortunately so that left India's hopes pinned on Parthiva Sureshwaren.

Parthiva improved as the weekend progressed however he was unable to score points and so he finishes the season with 0pts. On the plus side however there are a total of five drivers with 0pts and Parthiva is highest out of the five based on his 11th place finish at Brands Hatch. His final championship position is 25th.
Ebrahim's final position is 15th with 16pts.

This series was a support race to F1 this weekend at the Buddh International Circuit and so we saw two new guest teams (Meco Racing and Meco's Ministry of Speed), both of which are Indian teams.

Meco Racing fielded four guest Indian drivers (Rahil Noorani, Shashank Ravishankar, Mohit Ahuja and Sarosh Hataria) whereas Meco's Ministry of Speed fielded two guest Indian drivers (Vishnu Prasad and Sandeep Kumar). Regular team Meritus GP, who currently employ the only Indian regular Raj Bharath, also took on a guest Indian driver (Akhil Khushlani).

Guest drivers are ineligible to score points towards the championship however the rules are unclear about guest teams. The two guest teams did not score this weekend however they have been placed on the official standings sheet, both with zero points. There are four races to go in this series, all at the BIC and so there are some rumours that both guest teams will become regulars but this is yet to be confirmed.

All the results for the Indians are above but regular driver Raj Bharath had a good weekend with a 12th place in race one (which would become 9th without the guests), scoring 2pts. In race two Raj was a little less lucky and did not score.

The Indian remains 14th in the championship, just 2pts behind Andrey Khrapov in 13th.

A very mixed weekend for the young Indian driver. A disappointing race one but a great race two meant that Parth walked away with 4points this weekend to end his season.

Parth finished the championship in 15th place with 13pts and as Auto India Sports understands it, Parth will be looking to try and find a drive in Formula Renault 2.0 to further develop his career as a racing driver.

Full and up-to-date standings from all championships we follow can be viewed on our page here.